Windows SkyDrive is a file hosting service that allows users to upload and sync files to a cloud storage and then access them from a Web browser or their local device. It is part of the Windows Live range of online services and allows users to keep the files private, share them with contacts, or make the files public.Microsoft's Windows 8.1 upgrade now includes ofline file access to SkyDrive files, Opening and saving files to SkyDrive is now as easy as saving to your hard drive, but with SkyDrive, your files are also available to you on your phone, tablet, desktop PC, and via SkyDrive.com. In addition to the basics, the new upgrade comes up with some creative and unique ways to address the needs of the increasing number of people who have tons of files but relatively small device hard drives.

SkyDrive users will be able to access to all their SkyDrive files without actually downloading them i.e without using all your storage or internal bandwidth, using precious local disk space and Internet bandwidth. Microsoft's answer to this feature is what we often refer to as "placeholder files". A Placeholder file look and feel like normal folders and files. You can tap or click a folder and see all the folders and files inside it. You can tap or click a file and it will open, you can edit it and close it. You can move, delete, copy, or rename placeholder files just like you would do to any folder or file on your hard disk or storage device. But Skydrive will only download the full file when you access it. What Skydrive does is that it places a "placeholder" file containing a thumbnail image along with some basic properties and file content. This means that the placeholder file is significantly smaller in size then the original file in SkyDrive, but when you need to use it, Skydrive will download the full file for you. This is a very good advancement in cloud storage services

In the image above, a Picture folder in SkyDrive that’s 5.6GB in size but it’s only taking up 185MB on the local disk.

This is really cool :-) leave your comments about what you think of this new development.